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Saturday, 4 October 2014

Codex Dark Eldar: Review

A lot of information I read before the codex came out suggested that the
Dark Eldar codex was going to be a disappointment, I am currently writing this
into without reading the codex, but I hope that I can find something to argue
against this idea. So I’m going to have a quick read and give my review of the
codex and hopefully give you all a ray of sunshine out of all of this gloomy
expectation.

Well the codex is very interesting, I expected bigger changes but I think
what we have left is still a solid book and all the sky is falling folks are
just nit picking, now you probably will have to change your style of play a
little but not too much. Now let me give you a little more detail.

Lost Friends

Now as expected we lost a lot of special characters, the Baron, the
Lady and the Duke all left us to raid by ourselves. That was always going to
happen, but we also lost Vect, the guy who has been in the codex since the very
beginning. No new model for him so he left the scene and is relegated to just
the background. Maybe that's better, as he is the puppet master but still, it’s
a shame we left.

What surprised me the most though was we lost a unit which does have a
model, the Harlequins have left us to go dance with the lighter kin (for now).
They are still mentioned in the books background but we can no longer use them.
That surprised me, but I think it hints that they will leave the Eldar codex in
the future and possibly get their own mini dex, but that is a long way off, and
probably just wish listing. Still overall, not as many casualties as the Grey
Knights.

Rule Changes

I will start with the big one that will affect every dark eldar
player, the changes to Power from Pain. No longer is it just the 3 tier list of
abilities you get from murdering the lesser races, instead it is a boost EVERY
unit with power from pain gains depending on the turn. Now you don’t get
anything turn 1, and the upgrades only gradually go up, starting with FNP (6+)
but a few turns in your dark eldar start to become real monsters. This is something
that I can see aiding in the late game especially, and it helps that you no
longer need markers to remember which units have how many pain tokens, this is
a good bit of streamlining for once.

Speaking of streamlining, the changes to combat drugs I don’t
appreciate. While before granted we had some useless ones, now every result is
just a stat boost, which is Ok, and might be useful from time to time but I miss
the awesome ones like re-roll failed to wounds etc...

Also like everyone else we get our own warlord traits, but in my
opinion there is only a single trait you would want, which lets you re-roll seize
the initiative rolls, reserves and the roll for night fight. That’s great, but
the other mostly affect the individual them self i.e. +1 ws, rage, hatred. I
would rather take a rule book trait in that case.

As for the models themselves, honestly not much has changed stat wise,
its mainly just price and special rules which have changed, and the troop
choice haven’t really changed at all, bar the warriors dropping a single point.
If you just look at the old codex warriors, wyches and wracks (who can no
longer be fielded as troops) are just the same.

My old favourite section of the dark eldar, the HQ section is similar.
The succubus has become more expensive rather surprisingly but has gained an
easy access to ap 2 weapons as an alternative to wych weapons (which she can
still take). Haemonculus is now has the stats of the old ancient and the
ancient has been dropped, but the price in is between the two. He gains a rule
similar to the old altered rule allowing his unit to treat the turn as 1 higher
for power from pain, and comes with feel no pain as standard, which only helps
turn 1 and 2. The archon is much the same.

Elites real star are the Incubi who drop a few points and the
character upgrade might be worth taking now it’s only 10 points and you gain
rampage. I should probably say that I used the term star very loosely, it’s
more all the other elites are the same. The only change to the grotesques are
that they no longer have berserk rampage, and instead just have rampage, which
is a nice change, but nothing to shout home about really. Mandrakes have
changed massively now, they have baleblast from the start, and come with
stealth and shroud for less points. While I don’t see them killing hordes of
models, they have a change to actually be useful now.

Fast attack however are really very different, with the razorwing
jetfighter joining us here, which is think is about fair, and it’s about the
same as it used to be. Beastmasters, now it’s an odd choice to keep calling
them that as you no longer actually need to field and beast masters in the
unit, you can just go pure beasts. It’s probably best to have one though as otherwise
they are stuck at LD 5. All of the models got a little cheaper, but have been
reduced in power. Razorwings are now swarms, khymera are now daemons and the
other guy no longer gets bonus attacks. The role of the Reaver jetbikes has
changed in this book, no longer are they the fast unit which deals damage as
they go past, now they ram into things with hammer of wrath, but rending hammer
of wrath! Plus they get hit and run so they might survive, you never know. Scourges
got a massive boost as they are now allowed 4 special weapons, regardless of
unit size, so you can have they be very specialised in what they do, but unfortunately
they still scatter on deep strike, reducing their usefulness.

If it’s Heavy it got more expensive, no idea why but it did. I know I used
to rely on my heavy support in games, and apparently GW doesn’t like that. My favourite
vehicle, the ravager, has been made more expensive at a base of 110 and if you
want dark lances you have to pay for each. On top of that it lost aerial
assault, so it’s as good at shooting as every other fast skimmer, which I guess
is fair. But for a paper thin skimmer, I don’t think the increase in points was
fair. Talos and Cronos both go up by 20 points and neither of them have power
from pain, but they do start with feel no pain, so its a reasonable trade off.
Both can be taken in units up to 3 so we can expect to see a lot more of the
buggers, more akin to the wraith lists we all love to face... you know who you
are.

Formation and detachment

Once again the detachment is just the little brother of the formation.
The formation is a Kabalite Raiding Party, 6 units of warriors plus friends all
in transports going into the universe to enslave and other such fun. The
benefits of this are as long as the archon is alive you count power from pain
as being 1 higher, which is nice. Also for the first turn, and any turn with
night fight, troops get a 5+ cover save, and everyone else gets a 6+. Now it
doesn’t sound like much but with night fight, troops are getting a 4+ and everyone
else a 5+. However in order to get these benefits you need 6 warrior squads, I man
why would you do that to yourself? Even with the extra boost from power from pain
you are going to get murdered.

The detachment doesn’t have the power from pain boost but it does get
the save provided its turn 1 or night. Some units will benefit more than other
(mandrakes love this) and can help you vehicles if you don’t want to jink. In
order to take this the min is 1 Hq, 2 Troops and a fast attack and you are allowed
the standard extra but you get 5 extra fast attacks. This is brilliant as some
very interesting units live in the fast attack, and could represent a wych cult
very well on the table.

Wargear

Now the wargear has changed quite a bit for the dark eldar, and who is
allowed what will be quite controversial as many people will be disappointed by
the change, I know I was with a few of them. Let’s start with the big boys,

Weapons

·Huskblade: No longer ap 2, reduced to ap 3 and
still instant death

·Venom blade: very few models can actually have
it, and not one of them is in the HQ section. Only wrack character and scourge
character

·Electrocorosive whip: only wrack character can
have it... and its pants.

·Phantasm grenade launcher: now it’s a shooting
weapon which cuases units to take wounds equal to how much they lost a LD test
by.

· Shredder:
now has shred... still useless.

Other

·Soul-trap: if you cause and unsaved WOUND not
kill, a character in a challenge you get +1 strength.

·Shadow field: It still fails, after you fail a
save but it nicely waits till the end of the turn instead of instantly so you
have a little more protection.

·Clone field: now just a 4++

·Webway portal: Instead of placing a portal down,
the bearer and unit deep strikes in without scatter. Not bad.

Now the artefacts for the army are quite disappointing, I’m not going
to bother with them as they are either rehashed weapons (the djin blade) or
pointless (an ap 5 pistol which can get you a wound back... why?).

Conclusion

Now this codex defiantly has its ups and downs, as it’s practically everything
gets cheaper unless your heavy, in which case get more expensive. The lack of
venom blades while not crucial to the force is disappointing as we now don’t
have a good basic weapon to go to, we have to spend points on OK weapons. I am
sure the codex will be great after a little playing around with as nothing is
obviously bad, and a few things do look a lot better. I’m just sad my archon is
now just a little pointless. And if you like to spam venoms, you won’t even
notice that the codex has changed apart from that extra venom that you just can’t
explain.

What has surprised me though is that the supplement is going to be covens,
when the haemonculus units are probably one of the stronger in the codex, but whatever,
GW know what they are doing (apparently). I will try and get my hands on that and review
it for you guys as well.

8 comments:

What do you mean the Scourges scatter on deep strike, reducing their usefulness? All units scatter when deep striking. I have seen a Grey Knight player lose his Warlord and a squad of Terminators turn 1 due to mishap. Is there any penalty applied specifically to Scourges?

Swooping Hawks don't have any weapon upgrade apart from the Exarch, nor poison weapon. If Scourges don't scatter anymore, I will curse GW forever. We should all be content to take the risk. I have landed my Terminators right next to a bunch of Fire Warriors to toast them with an Incinerator.

MORE UNIQUE? Are you drunk?! What they are doing is taking AWAY any and all unique tech/special rules/characters the codex had an replacing them with bland and useless BRB bullshit. Bikes get rending HoW...just great. Only prob with that is they now have to FUCKING CHARGE to do that. Do you know what happens when you charge with T4 5+ save models? You get fucking obliterated. That's what. "But they have Hit and Run..." sure. AFTER the enemy gets to strike them down, the surviving one-two guys MIGHT make it out. Even that is not guaranteed.

Venomblades and huksblades on S4 models were OP apparently...and the eldar powerfist that strikes at I6 is not...

Pour on the horseshit GW. Pour it on. Let's see if anyone is left playing your sorry excuse for a game in a year.

Srsly. Try DropZone commander, Malifaux, Infinity...hell even Warmahordes has better-written rules and balance. Yes, I know they are different types of games. What I am pointing to is that waaaay smaller companies have written rules that are orders of magnitude better than 40k.

While that is true, it is still a terrible way to use these fast but fragile units. Bikes still get zero bonus to their charge rolls so there is a small but ever-present chance of them taking wounds from overwatch without actually making it into combat.

The rending might be cool. But then again, my Dreadknight will toast these guys to shit before they have the chance. Seriously, who do Dark Eldar have such terrible armor saves? Just put a Salamander army against them, or the Wave Serpent, and they will cry. Anyway, I look forward to fighting (and hopefully killing) the new Dark Eldar soon.